1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to vehicle lighting means and is particularly directed to means for illuminating vehicle exteriors, such as the fuselage, empennage and wings of aircraft.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Pilots operating under Visual Flight Rules are required to keep a constant lookout for other aircraft in order to avoid mid-air collisions. However, smog, haze, dusk and night often make aircraft extremely difficult to see. To alleviate this problem, aircraft have, for many years, carried position lights on their wingtips and tails. However, such lighting is of minimal effectiveness, especially when flying over heavily populated areas. In recent years, flashing strobe lights have provided some improvement. Unfortunately, strobe lights are relatively bulky and heavy, create substantial drag and consume considerable electric power. Furthermore, while both the position lights and the strobe lights serve to indicate the position of the aircraft to other pilots, neither of these devices actually illuminate the aircraft on which they are mounted, and hence, provide little, if any, information regarding aircraft attitude. Since position lights and strobe lights are traditionally mounted at widely separated locations on an aircraft, the position indication provided by such lights is only approximate and numerous mid-air collisions have occurred because pilots could only see one of the running lights and could not remember whether the red light was on the right or left wingtip.
Business and commercial aircraft have sometimes provided lights which would illuminate the vertical tail surface. However, these lights have been expensive, bulky and consume substantial electrical power. Consequently, they have not been widely used on private aircraft and even the business and commercial aircraft have tended to use these lights only on the ground, for advertising purposes, rather than in the air for collision avoidance.